The city skates

San Francisco is starting to catch up with the West Coast trend of converting underused land into skate parks and is close to finalizing designs on a new skate spot in the North Mission — its second in as many years.

If all goes as planned, the park will be built on a shaded half-acre parking lot that sits beneath freeway heading toward the Octavia off-ramp of Highway 101. The lot, at Mission street and Duboce avenue, has been a magnet for trash and n’er do wells. A similar nearby asphalt parcel would be replaced with a new basketball court and dog park.

Caltrans gave the land to the city as part of the construction of the off-ramp and the new Octavia Boulevard. Funds from the sale of other former Caltrans land was earmarked for community improvements. The idea for a skate park emerged after neighbors lobbied for something that would bring activity to the large, concrete open spaces.

Skateboarding is popular in the city, yet illegal nearly everywhere other than neighborhood sidewalks. City Traffic Code Section 100 prohibits skateboarding on any city street and any sidewalk in any business district.

Rich Hillis in the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development says that the city and property owners spend a lot of money on obstructions to keep skaters off their property. The city’s first public skate boarding venue opened at the Potrero Del Sol park in the South Mission in 2008 and has been widly popular, Hillis said.

Oakland has seen a handful of skateparks sprout up in the past couple of years and Portland has five. The city’s new skate park will cost $1 million and could be complete in a year Hillis said.